Four post-war-migrant friends led the building of a unique and iconic clock tower in Ulverstone on Tasmania’s northern coast, but then weren’t invited to its opening.
On that day in February, 1954, they watched over a backyard fence as the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth rolled past with her motorcade.
Slovenian-born Jernej Balzelj, 92, is the only surviving member of the 12-man team who hand-built the Shrine of Remembrance clock tower, which is also the town’s war memorial and cenotaph.
His photos of the remarkable and — at times — dangerous build are central to a new permanent exhibition in the town’s HIVE cultural centre.
“It is hard to explain or understand why we weren’t invited to that opening,” Mr Balzelj says, gazing out the window at the 24-metre-high clock tower, just outside the exhibition space.
“I’m not a royalist because I believe that a human being has to earn their position, not be born [into it].”
Exhibition tells forgotten tale
Central Coast Council’s manager of arts and culture, Jessie Pangas, says that part of the plan for the recently opened HIVE was always to celebrate the clock’s story.
“Everyone who has grown up here or visited knows the clock as this iconic point of focus and this building gives us a new perspective on it,” Ms Pangas says.
“This exhibition is permanent and we hope to keep adding to it.
“It’s a little-known story and a fact that these hardworking migrant men weren’t thanked as they should have been. The council wanted to redress that in here.”
And the story is remarkable. The budget even moreso: £A5831 pounds in total (about $11,600 in 1953).
The man with the plan, Cvetko Mejac, had also arrived from Slovenia after the war.
He led the formation of a concrete designs company called Artisan on Mr Balzelj’s small piece of land on South Road. Locals would recognise the location today as the site of a pet food abattoir.
“Rudi Zimic, John Pozonel, Cvetko Mejac and myself all became friends and we formed Artisan. But Cvetko Mejac was the only person who knew how to build this mighty structure,” Mr Balzelj says.
“John Pozonel was a barber, I was an unskilled labourer. None of us had worked with concrete but we went along for the ride.
“Local builders watched on the day we took the supports away, expecting it to collapse. But here it is, still standing.”
Mr Balzelj still has the Box Brownie camera he used to document the incredible efforts of just a dozen men to hand-build the monument in less than five months.
Era of improvised construction
The most astonishing image is of a 30m-high wooden scaffold: a slippery, flexing, spider’s web of “four by twos”, 10x5cm boards, sawn locally and simply bolted together.
On one occasion, Mr Balzelj slipped on the timber and almost fell to the ground. It was only that his foot got hooked in a piece of steel mesh that he didn’t fall 8 metres onto concrete.
Curator of the Shrine of Remembrance exhibition Jaydeyn Thomas says it was incredible what was achieved without excavators or other large machinery.
“Twelve men dug the foundations by hand and mixed and poured 118 cubic metres for that,” Ms Thomas says.
“Then they poured 225 cubic metres of concrete for the three columns, using a motorised rope lift.”
The exhibition at HIVE also breaks down the multi-layered symbolism of the structure.
It sits on a Map of Tasmania and the cenotaph sits on a red slab, symbolising the blood sacrifice of those who served. The three columns represent the army, air force and navy.
It is capped by a representation of the eternal flame, which still glows red every night above the north-west coastal town.
A brilliant but mysterious man
Mr Balzelj remembers his friend Mr Mejac as a truly brilliant person but a man who had a darker, mysterious side he never came to fully understand.
Not long after the clock was finished, Mr Mejac suddenly left the town and disappeared from the lives of his friends.
“I was left bankrupt. I lost all of my possessions overnight,” Mr Balzelj said.
“What I had, I [could] fit into an overnight bag, which I took to King Island for a few months. I started once more.”
The energetic Mr Balzelj had already survived much bigger struggles, having fled through the Iron Curtain to Italy in 1949, aged just 18. He was moved through nine Italian jails on his way to a refugee camp near Rome.
“At the time, Australia needed labourers and Arthur Caldwell [the then prime minister] sent a representative to find men who could work. Work is what I do.”
Almost 70 years after the Queen went by, Mr Balzelj remains in awe of Mr Mejac’s talent and is eternally proud and fond of the clock he helped to build.
“I’m very proud to have stayed here in Ulverstone and that my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren can still see this clock today.”